The Bangladesh National Parliament has 50 seats among a total 350 reserved exclusively for women, according to article 65 of the national constitution. In Bangladesh, transgender people are categorized as “hijra” (a term referring to a member of the third sex) on their national identity card. However, there is no specific provision in the constitution that prevents members of the hijra community from running for the 50 reserved seats. According to Election Commission Secretary Helaluddin Ahmed, any eligible woman, including hijras who identify as women, can qualify for the reserved seats.

For Falguni, one of the eight transgender candidates, running for office means representing the whole transgender community:

We are citizens of Bangladesh but we have no representation in the parliament. There is no one from our community who can understand and raise our concerns. That is why we are running for the seats.

On November 11, 2013, the hijra community was officially recognized as a separate gender by the nation's government. This step was mainly taken as an aim to remove the socio-economic barriers to the community and to end their discrimination in education, health, and housing.

A year later, on November 11, 2014, thousands of Bangladeshi transgender people wearing colorful sarees marched the first ever Pride parade in the country to mark a year since their official recognition as a third gender. The streets of Dhaka were filled with colors and the sounds of joy as they carried a huge Bangladeshi flag and banners, one of which read: “The days of stigma, discrimination and fear are over”.

Since then, the transgender community has been making strides towards carving out space for themselves in Bangladeshi society. On December 2014, the Ministry of Social Welfare invited the community to apply for government jobs.

On July 2015, after Labannya Hijra witnessed the murder of a secular blogger Washikur Rahman by Islamist radicals on the streets of Dhaka, and successfully helped in the arrest of the perpetrators, the Bangladesh Government announced plans to recruit and enlist hijras as traffic police officials.

On July 1, 2018, Tanisha Yeasmin Chaity became the first transgender official in Bangladesh's state-run human rights watchdog – the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

All these events have been widely rejoiced by not only Bangladeshis but by people around the world. Below Twitter users describe their support for the Bangladeshi transgender community:

I don’t know if it’s true I don’t know if this will happen but all I know is it’s about time that we move forward together as humans. The thought of equality for all irrespective of their gender, cast, race, ethnicity or orientation makes me proud to be a citizen of Bangladesh #eqaulityinBD

Nice initiative but would have been much better I think if they were groomed first rather than as just positioning as a puppet on the parliament!

Awami League-led 14 party alliance had a landslide victory on the national elections of 30 December 2018. Of the 50 reserved women's seats, they have 43. It is still to be seen how the party, and the transgender nominees running on their ticket, will do in this year's election cycle.

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